Chapter IV

What happened then was not in any wise comprehensible to Chip Warren.

Had Blacky Jordan turned viciously on the latecomer, striking her down as brutally as he had Chip and Salvation--that would have been understandable. Or had he meekly begged forgiveness--that, too, Chip could have understood. For the girl was--had to be!--either one of two things. Servant or mistress of the pirate chieftain.

But Jordan did neither of these things. Instead, he fingered his cheek where it flamed dull scarlet against brown, and his eyes were cloudy pools of anger and some contrasting emotion Chip could not name. His fingers twitched, his mouth worked. Then something like a shrug stirred his shoulders; he turned to his silently watching followers.

"Well--what are you standin' around here for? You got work to do, ain't you? Well, get goin', then!"

With obedient alacrity the mob dispersed. Chip had his first clear, unobstructed view of the terrain upon which the _Chickadee_ had crashed. He saw that his guess had been a good one. It was an asteroid. And judging by the swift dip of the horizon, the visible arch of the distant landscape, a rather small one. Barely a mile in diameter. A mere sliver in the colossal débris of the Belt.

But, then, whence came its gravity? Though he wore no bulger he felt comfortably secure on this tiny fragment of matter. And how did a floating rock of this size maintain an atmosphere of Earth normal?

These were perplexing questions, but there was no opportunity now to solve them. For the girl had helped Salvation to his feet, had lent him a shoulder in support, and now was moving away. Jordan glared at her pettishly.

"An' just where do you think you're goin'?"

The Lorelei's gaze did not meet his, it passed clear through him as if he did not exist. Her voice was icy cold.

"Stand aside, please! I'm taking him below."

And again Blacky Jordan backed down! As before, his manner toward the girl was baffling. It was peremptory, yet at the same time conciliatory; at once truculent and submissive! He gave in with a graceless shrug.

"Oh, all right! Take 'em _all_ below. I can't waste any more time on 'em right now. But I'll see 'em again later. Especially _you_--" He jerked his head toward Salvation, then stared thoughtfully at Chip--"and you, too, bucko. Yeah. Me and you is goin' to have a nice little talk later on."

And he stalked away. Hope flared in Chip that now he might find a chance to improve their lot. Not one of the men was guarding them. Only this girl, and she was preoccupied with Salvation--

But--his hope was vain. No gaoler needs guard prisoners immured on a desert isle. Their weapons had been stripped from them, their ship was a tangled heap of wreckage. And there was no other space vessel in sight.

Chip looked at Syd. Palmer's shake of the head confessed an equal bewilderment. Perhaps the answer to this mad situation lay where the girl led. The two spacemen followed.

* * * * *

Their way took them into a tunnel which sloped for a few hundred yards into the earth, then debouched into a small cavern. Into the far wall of this was set a grilled gateway which, when opened by the girl, revealed--an elevator. Into this she helped Salvation. Chip and Syd, delayed by the same doubt, held back. The girl, noting their hesitation, addressed them directly for the first time.

"This way," she said. "Come on! Quickly!"

Chip said suspiciously, "Just a minute, sister. How do we know this isn't a trick of some kind--"

Her eyes flamed electric-blue, and her voice cracked like a whip.

"Don't be a fool! Get in here--and hurry! When he thinks it over he may change his mind. We're getting away with murder!"

It didn't make sense, but there was nothing to gain by lingering here. The two entered the conveyance, the girl pressed a button and concealed motors whined as they began to descend swiftly. But the last word was still Chip's.

"That's just what you _have_ been getting away with," he acknowledged grimly, "but you're nearing the end of your rope now--Lorelei!"

In the semidarkness, the girl's eyes were pools of liquid surprise.

"Getting away with--end of--I don't understand?"

"Murder!" gritted Chip. "Murder and piracy. A dozen spacecraft within the past two months, scuttled and every man of their crews done to death. But your siren-song won't tempt many more, Lorelei. The Space Patrol is on to your alluring little trap. You may finish _us_ off, but the battle fleet will find you eventually, and when it does--"

He didn't finish his prophecy, for the elevator came to rest; the door opened. And peering in at them, hurrying forward to greet them and take the sagging weight of the aged missionary from the girl's arm, was a white-haired old man.

"Alison!" he cried. "You're back safely! Thank the Lord! You shouldn't have gone above. It's dangerous, child, dangerous to mingle with such scoundrels! Who are these--?"

And then the girl did a surprising thing. A particularly surprising thing, inasmuch as a few minutes ago, facing Blacky Jordan like a golden Valkyr, her boldness had won from Chip Warren a grudging admiration. She fled to the old man's side, buried her face in his shoulder and cried:

"Daddy--this piracy, this murder and bloodshed--these men think _I_ am part of it!"

The old man said, "Now, now, dear!" soothingly, and glared reproof at his visitors. "There must be some mistake--" And to the others he suggested, "Gentlemen, will you come with me? We must get to the bottom of this."

Their journey this time was short. Through one door to a series of warm, well-lighted chambers. But stupefying. Because here, at what Chip realized must be the very core of the tiny planetoid, had been carved from solid rock quarters that matched, in efficiency and luxury, any elaborate dwelling on the face of a civilized planet!

Comfortable living chambers were here, furnished in excellent taste. And through the doorways leading to adjacent rooms Chip glimpsed white-tiled compartments wherein were visible rows upon rows of beakers and flasks, retorts, motor-units, experimental apparatus. Laboratories, beautifully arranged and maintained! He stared at his host in astonishment.

"How--?" he stammered. "Who--?"

"Will you be seated, gentlemen?" suggested the older man. "There! Now, let us get to the root of this frightful affair. You accused my daughter of implication--?"

Chip said, "We--we had ample reason to, sir. First let me introduce myself and my friends. I am Chip Warren ... this is my friend and shipmate, Syd Palmer ... and this is Salvation Smith...."

"Salvation Smith! Not really? I've heard of you, Padre," said the old man. "You were engaged in bringing spiritual light to the Martian outlanders at about the time I was supplying Mars with a more--er--mechanical type--"

Salvation lifted his head suddenly.

"Grayland Blaine! Dr. Grayland Blaine. The greatest astrophysicist in the System!"

"Thank you, Padre. You flatter me. And this is my daughter, Alison. But now--to business. You were saying--?"

"Tell him, Chip," bade Salvation. "I don't know how Dr. Blaine and his daughter got involved with Blacky Jordan. But I know one thing--that they're as innocent of any wrongdoing as any pair alive."

Chip needed no second invitation. A great gladness was upon him that the girl now listening to his words was not what he had feared and believed. Eagerly he embarked on his story, told them everything from the moment of his meeting Haldane to the moment Alison Blaine had so fortuitously appeared in time to save Salvation.

But if his spirits were high, those of his listeners seemed to sink lower with each word. When he had finished, a gloom hung heavily upon Dr. Blaine's brow. He looked at his daughter and sighed.

"It is worse than we feared and suspected, my dear. They _are_ using my inventions, but not for the benefit to mankind I intended. Instead, they have distorted them to their own foul purposes. And we are helpless to stop them!"

"Your--your inventions?" repeated Syd Palmer.

* * * * *

Dr. Blaine nodded somberly. "Yes. You say you saw Alison's face in your _perilens_? And heard her voice calling for help?"

"On every cycle! That was the amazing part. Every wavelength carried her image, and her voice came through in spite of the fact that the audio was not turned on."

"But naturally," assented the old man. "That is the principle on which it operates. I call it the 'omniwave.' It is a new method of superimposing sound and light waves on receptors in such a way that they can be transmitted through any medium over a series of overlapping wavelengths ranging from 30 kilocycles down to 4,000 Angstrom units. It requires only a supersensitive iconoscope of my own devising, coupled with radiant-projectors--"

"It blanketed," Chip told him, "every instrument on our ship. We tried to tune it out so we could see where we were going, but it was impossible. The result was we were easy prey for Jordan's gang. They clamped a tractor on us, crashed us on this asteroid. Only thing I don't understand," he frowned, "is how we managed to get within their range. I was blind-flying, true. But I forejetted the _Chickadee_ to avoid the possibility of ramming any asteroid--"

Again Dr. Blaine shook his head.

"You would have had a hard time avoiding this one, my boy. Because, you see, it was not sitting stationary. It was moving toward you."

"Moving toward--Oh, no, Doctor! Impossible. The asteroids follow a clockwise course about the Sun!"

"Not this one," denied the old man. "Because this is no ordinary asteroid, Warren. This whole rock, this mass of matter in space--is a navigable spaceship!"

Salvation's jaw dropped open. He said in hallowed tones, "'Surely the Lord worketh in wondrous ways His marvels to unfold!' You said--a spaceship, Dr. Blaine?"

Blaine's shoulders drooped dispiritedly.

"Yes. This is the great invention on which I have labored in secret for years. The invention which I had hoped would prove a glorious boon to man. The construction of that one type of space-voyager which could be destroyed by only a most devastating catastrophe.

"As you all know well, the major hazard of spaceflight is that the craft employed, however strongly constructed, is ever but a mote as compared with those hurtling celestial bodies it may chance to meet in space. Thus the efforts of science have ever been to cut down the collision risk. The Moran deflector ... the permalloy hood ... the automatic warp ... these are a few of the devices used. With some success, yes; but--there are failures, too. Each year more than a hundred ships crash headlong, or are crashed into by rogue asteroids, meteor swarms, bits of cosmic débris of mountainous size.

"Patrol lightships have been placed in those locations recognized to be most dangerous to space travel. But you know that the toll taken by relentless Nature on these gallant ships is terrible.

"I therefore dreamed that Man might build a gigantic lightship from a solid asteroid! A rock so large that no tiny meteor could damage it, one of sufficient mass to repel the advance of rogue asteroids. To the accomplishment of this I bent my efforts. You are within the result."

"You mean," Chip demanded, "this entire planetoid is equipped with rockets? It can fly itself?"

"Exactly. With an atomblast my laborers hollowed out living quarters, control chambers. At one-eighth mile intervals jets have been installed in the asteroid. These are fed from the central explosion chamber. In addition, gravity and atmosphere of Earth normal constant are maintained, when the planetoid is at rest, by means of energy-warp accumulators."

The old man sighed. "It was a fond dream. But just as it neared fruition, came tragedy. Blacky Jordan's pirate gang, by sheer chance, landed on the _Aurora_--the name of my cosmic craft. Trusting fool that I am, I made them welcome, took them into my refuge and proudly displayed its mechanism."

Chip nodded.

"I can guess the rest. They took over. Since then they've held you prisoners here, and used this as their base. And the image of Alison--"

"A recording," explained Blaine, "made when she attempted, vainly, to call for help. Jordan was clever enough to realize its value. Now whenever he sights a craft which he wishes to ravage, he tempts it within range by playing the visual record. When the unwary ship is drawn near enough, it finds itself blanketed, as you were. And Jordan then smashes the _Aurora_ into the hapless vessel."

Salvation ventured, "And your laborers? Dead?"

"All of them. Jordan follows the ancient principle of all unprincipled rogues. 'Dead men tell no tales.' The only reason Alison and I are still alive is that he fears he may some day need my knowledge. And Alison--"

The girl spoke for herself. Softly enough, but her eyes were brittle and challenging. "Alison lives because the brutish fool fancies himself as a Don Juan."

It was a complete giveaway that this simple statement should strike the spark of Chip's anger more vehemently than any other. His brow darkened, and he came to his feet with a roar.

"What! You mean that he actually dares--"

"Steady, son!" That was Salvation Smith. Age might have taken its toll on the missionary's strength, but not his recuperative powers. The old man seemed to have completely recovered from the effects of the beating he had taken a short while before. There was even the thin ghost of a smile upon his lips.

"The young lady seems to be quite capable of taking care of herself. Our job, as I see it, is to wrest control of the _Aurora_ from Blacky Jordan and his gang. Dr. Blaine, surely you must have some plan?"

Dr. Blaine shook his head miserably. "I fear not. I built the _Aurora_; I know every nook and cranny of her. But it does me no good. Jordan is complete master of the vital working parts of the asteroid. Alison and I are virtual prisoners in this one, harmless compartment, separated by tons of solid rock from the machine chambers. If we could regain control of those rooms, of course--"

"Well," demanded Chip belligerently, "why can't we? There are five of us now. Together we should be able to force our way into--"

"Into," Dr. Blaine told him morbidly, "an early grave. You underestimate Jordan's savagery, Warren. Alison and I have lived on sufferance only. You and your companions have continued to exist only because you have a secret he would give much to possess. Let us make one hostile move, and he will have no compunctions whatsoever against destroying us all. And he has both the men and the weapons with which to do it."

"Nevertheless," gritted Chip, "there must be _some_ way. And by the Seven Sacred Stars--"

"Shhh!" hissed Syd warningly. "Someone outside!"

True, the hum of the elevator had sounded and ceased. Now the latch clicked, and one of Jordan's men stared at them suspiciously from the doorway. His eyes swept the group, singled out Chip Warren.

"You," he said. "Come along. The chief wants to see you."